There’s a great post with a design for a virtual birth centre, very coherent thoughts about what women want in the place where they give birth, and a great autoethnographic post on EBM (evidence-based medicine) and Web2.0

Sarah also has a great collection of SL-midwifery links on her delicious profile.

I have no idea how we are going to animate the virtual birth unit, but here is an idea of what giving birth in Second Life looks like.

I am a bit freaked out thinking that people give birth in Second Life for fun, but it is interesting to watch the video from a technical point of view. My favorite bit of this video is that the midwife is wearing a big glittering diamond ring over her sterile gloves!! I’d never get away with that in real life…but then again, I wish I owned a big glittering diamond ring in real life!

The video at YouTube

A great resource and definitely a blog to follow!

Even though hard-core gamers despise and laugh at Second Life’s graphics, ‘we’ve come a long way, baby…’

Here’s an amusing insight on Tinies:

Their community is strictly PG-rated and constantly engages in special events. They hold regular festivals to celebrate holidays, gather together to watch movies, play games such as Primtionary - a take on Pictionary where the players must use their SL building skills to deliver clues - and just basically have a good time. They regularly invade "biggie" areas in mass, partying along with their larger counterparts in the name of Waffles, preferably on a stick.

Oh and yes, some of them are armed to the teeth.

 Brilliant!

A fabulous article and well worth reading – gorgeous pics, too. A hefty number of comments to the original article as well…

Check out this video that my good friend PF Anderson sent me. Basically, on December 5th, Tom Daschle put out a request for citizens to host community meetings on Healthcare Reform, helping out the Obama Transition Team. Lots of input from people all over the country with various health issues and circumstances. For more info, check out her original post.

After a few disappointing shops, I came across a little German-style island — Adelebsen Isle — that had a plethora of shops catering mostly to women (as most of the shops in SL do) but also a couple for men. The shopping area is so large I would recommend you teleport in and fly up a bit to get a bit of scope; all of the shops in the various squares look like each other so it’s easy to get disoriented and believe that you’ve seen all there is to see*.

Whilst the men’s clothing was nothing to rave about (actually, it looked a bit too camp for me), the range of women’s clothing was phenomenal. Again, very little that Penny and Isabella could wear in a professional business setting without unsettling the servants and horses, but quite fetching none the less.

See what you think – and there’s a whole swag of them up on flickr.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Sweet Faces – amazing skins!

The design work that has gone into the Sweet Faces skins is evident – stunning! Well worth the approximately L$2500 for the best ones, which include pretty good representations of Monica Bellucci, Charlize Theron (a number of versions), Avril Lavigne, Beyonce, Megan Fox, Scarlett Johansson, Hillary Duff, Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, Claire (not sure who she is, but no doubt someone will laugh at me for not knowing ) and a heap more. Gorgeous!

*For example, over on one side of the island there’s a whole swag of shops dedicated to some infant ‘things’ that involve some sort of ‘Kodama’ role-playing, mythical sort of stuff of which I know nothing, as well as other ‘tiny avatar’ shops. Quite why tiny teddy bears would need M16s, M4A1s,  P90s,  Black Hawk helicopters and other advanced weaponry is beyond me, but no doubt someone somewhere is enjoying watching a small teddy bear crawl over a hill and blow another small teddy bear to smithereens.

Right on the edge of a river there’s a pet shop full of puppy avatars in all manner of clothing – Harry Potter seems to be a popular collection – as well as tiny ostriches, tiny elephants, mice, worms, spiders, leopards, snowmen, human hearts, DNA, stinky poo, kittens, beds for kittens to sleep and snore in (complete with snoring, of course!) and quite naturally ballet routines and outfits for your fledgling ballerina cat.

In all I spent a good six hours pfaffing around, but I had such fun doing it!

No longer can they be contained behind the firewall of Second Life. Penny Cazalet and Isabella Scheflo, my two fabulous assistants at the BetterComms Second Life office, have breached the very porous membrane that we like to call ‘reality’, and have slinked into the light of day.

This is the documentation of their first big adventure, with more to come each month, we promise (read the background as to where the idea came from).

Download NOW the entire first edition of this new monthly initiative [pdf, 831k] and revel in their mastery of social media. Your comments and suggestions as to other exciting adventures they can get up to are most welcome!

Installing pre-purchased office furniture, putting up posters, jiggery-pokering around… it all adds up to many hours.

Why bother?

Because I wanted to sort out the backgrounds and layouts for the creation of a series of Social Media-focused comics based on Penny and Isabella (see an earlier post for more on where the inspiration came from).

Here’s some snaps from the 18 hour marathon session (and yes, I was dog-tired after it!):

Prompted by an reporter from one of the large dailies contacting my co-supervisor, Dr. Denise Wood, and myself, here’s some of the answers I gave to his questions. They may be of value to you, too…

1. What are the main virtual worlds at the moment? Do you have stats on patronage?

The main virtual worlds can be split between those aimed at kids and those at adults. Taking some of my stats from K-Zero’s latest quarterly report, for kids the stand-outs are ‘Habbo Hotel’ (100m members), Neopets (45m), Stardoll (21m), Poptropica (20m), Club Penguin (19m), and BarbieGirls (15m)

For adults (over 18) it would be IMVU (20m, although it has a fair number of teenage users, probably more under 18 than over it) and Second Life (16m) as the two ‘biggies’, but it is expected that Football Superstars (just launched) and Sony’s ‘Home’ (still in beta but ‘live’ on every PS3) will give both a good ‘run for their money’ [although there is still some very valid speculation as to whether 'Home' will be any good at all -- see Eurogamer and Wagner James Au.]

2. Where is patronage growing and falling? Why?

It doesn’t appear to be falling anywhere. In fact, usage is being reported as ‘up’ across all virtual worlds, in line with findings from the Great Depression and the Second World War that during times of hardship or stress people immerse themselves in entertainment as an escape mechanism.

Of more interest is the amount of money being invested in virtual worlds. As reported by Virtual Worlds Management, the following sums have been invested:

Q3 2008 - $148m in 12 virtual world companies
Q2 2008 - $161m in 16 virtual world companies
Q1 2008 - $184m in 23 virtual world companies

Looking at those figures, you might think that there has been a gradual decline of investment in virtual worlds reflecting a decline in the whole virtual world environment, but that is not the case. The number of virtual worlds in ’startup’ phase is growing, not shrinking. What is occurring is that micro-niches are beginning to develop, mostly around topics like sport, music and computer/video games.

As an aside, did you know that women comprise 40% of US gamers, 26% of whom are over the age of 50? Or that the average age of computer/videogame players has risen to 35? Or that women aged 18 or over represent a significantly greater proportion of the game-playing population (33%) compared to boys aged 17 or younger (18%)? [Thanks to Gary Hayes for this data]

These micro-niches will fill the gaps that larger, catch-all worlds like Second Life cannot adequately cater for.

3. How is Second Life going and who is there now? Can people actually make money there? Or is it being used more for research now?

People are still making money in Second Life, although some recent policy and pricing decisions by Linden Lab, the owners of the Second Life platform, have affected some previous high-earners. Previously land developers were the primary income group, however it would appear that retailers of digital goods are the primary earners. Each month around 60,000 businesses are reported to be ‘cash flow positive’ in Second Life - anywhere from L$5 (about 2c Australian) to $5,000 Australian. There are still, despite the recession all around us, many people who make their living in Second Life.

But the amount of tertiary institutions using Second Life as a development platform for their own research is still growing healthily. As uber-legend Gary P Hayes points out, most tertiary level instruction is still focused at frames-per-second game development, not social or simulation virtual world conceptualisation and understanding, and there needs to be a shift in thinking about digital media, otherwise the course offerings will be increasingly and rapidly irrelevant as the traditional media falls into the ‘whatever happened to…?’ category.

4. What do people doing on the various worlds?

Most people use social virtual worlds to, surprisingly, socialise. The human need to ‘connect’ with others of similar tastes and viewpoints is arguably more greatly felt than ever as we negotiate an ever-fracturing, confusing and discombobulated world. Numerous studies into the use that denizens put virtual worlds have repeatedly shown that ‘connecting’ and ‘making friends’ with others is a key driver to online, in-world behaviour, even more so when those denizens might be denied ‘real world’ opportunities to ‘connect’ because of their own locational remoteness, disability or handicap. [D, I presume you will have much to add here ]

5. What is the appeal?

The appeal of virtual worlds is as old as the first story, as told by Ug to his cavemen colleagues. It is the inbuilt desire we all share to find fellowship with others, to immerse ourselves in another world that allows us to forget the trials and tribulations of this one, even if just for a short while.

As a race we have shown ourselves sublimely willing to disassociate from the day-to-day and take ourselves off to far away times and places via books, movies, radio plays and theatre. 

Today’s virtual worlds are the next logical extension of that propensity - a place where all of the world’s books, movies, radio plays and theatre can be re-lived and re-enacted by us whenever we choose.

Just as the wardrobe was the entrance to a magical kingdom of Narnia, so today’s computer is the entrance to a magical kingdom every bit as rich, as deep and as nuanced; only now we have the opportunity to be not just a passive reader but a very real and active participant.

As an aside, the rather fabulous MetaverseJournal, Australasia’s best news site for virtual world devotees, has just published part one of a two-part interview with me.

Word reaches me from my nemesis and arch-rival for the hearts and minds of all right-thinking Copenhagians, Allan Jenkins, that a Demos report robustly suggests that companies pull their flamin’ heads in and embrace social technology.

Says Jenko:

“Companies should not dismiss staff who use social networking sites such as Facebook and Bebo at work as merely time-wasters, a Demos study suggests.

Attempts to control employees’ use of such software could damage firms in the long run by limiting the way staff communicate, the think tank said.”

Allan Jenkins, Allan Jenkins’ Desirable Roasted Coffee, Oct 2008

He goes on to add:

Read the full BBC article, then download Network Citizens: Power and Responsibility at Work. It’s good stuff (and it’s a free download, despite the £10 price tag).

I would go as far as to say “bosses must embrace social networks.”

Two (of countless) reasons:

• Social networks build stronger organizations. Strong organizations tend to be more profitable.
• The incoming entry-level cohorts live on social networks (Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, etc). They IM and text as naturally as breathing. Tell them they can’t use these tools at work, and you will soon see the best of them snapped up by your competitors.

You should read the whole article.